It’s worrying that it doesn’t surprise me anyore

I think I’ve finally got to the same point as many Arsenal fans where yesterday’s result left me feeling numb. It had a sense of inevitability about it. When we were 1:0 up at half time I knew Palace would score next and they did. We were so desperate for that second goal that we threw the kitchen sink at them, forgetting that Bolasie and Sako are two of the fastest, yet least productive(in fairness) wingers in the league.

Bolasie did nothing all game, he couldn’t control a pass, he has no actual technical ability whatsoever, but that didn’t mean we could leave him completely open all game, despite the fact that time and time again he was unable to exploit the space and opportunity given to him.

Yet even a broken clock is correct twice a day and Bolasie got it right, controlled the ball, stepped inside and hit a reverse shot inside the near post – catching out Cech and avoiding the block by Coquelin. I wasn’t angry, I was waiting for it and when it came we just didn’t look like we could get a winner. Yesterday was a massive opportunity to pull back some ground on those above us, given that we have our game in hand on Thursday.

Leicester dropped points, Spurs play tonight and we could have done with putting a bit of pressure on them as they visit Stoke. If they drop points our draw yesterday looks even worse. I’m wholly numb to it all however. I thought we were rather clueless yesterday, pumping terrible crosses into the box with little hope for anything positive happening. Ted Knutson said on Arseblog on Friday that actually crosses are one of the most inefficient way to score and it reminded me of when we never used to cross the ball – now we hit hopeful after hopeful cross into the box and seem unable to break the mould.

I hate feeling this numb, this negative about it. It’s not me and its not how I feel about Arsenal long-term, but right now, what I’m seeing on the pitch isn’t exciting me at all. We have some fantastic players but we just aren’t making the best of them. Alexis ran his boots into the ground trying to make something happen but our substitutions could affect the inevitable. We needed to change the system and try and do something different and it just didn’t happen. Worryingly Rambo looked a bit ordinary yesterday – he couldn’t have an effect. I felt his introduction might give us more penertration through the middle but Palace sensible packed the middle corridor of the pitch and challenged us to keep hitting those terrible crosses into the box.

Our set-pieces didn’t excite either, with Ozil looking to hit crosses in for the most part, we took two shots, one from Alexis and one from Ozil, both were dangerously close, but it does make me wonder why we didn’t take more opportunities to challenge the ‘keeper.

It felt a bit like “what we have we hold”, but we didn’t follow the script. We should have kept it tighter, but we chased for more goals to kill the game off and we were too gung-ho again.

So, so disappointing. Right now I wonder whether we can even muster a positive result against West Brom.

Embarrasing.

WG

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Discussion ¬

We seem to be unable to fully concentrate on the game at hand having one eye on the next bigger game.
This started with Southampton away at Xmas. They were on a terrible run and we walked onto the pitch thinking the three points were already in the bag.
This has happened numerous times this season and for me culminated in the FA Cup home defeat by Watford.
Who’s to blame?
Wenger, when interviewed has often said that he prefers not to clutter his players heads with instruction before the game.
So what does he say?
There has been so many times over the past few seasons where you could easily turn up for the second half of the game and would have missed nothing except slow, predictable and ineffecient football.
Arsenal tore into Man Utd at home and after 20 minutes were 3-0 up. Did they learn a lesson from that and repeat it in subsequent games? No.

For me,the manager must take a large slice of the blame for this.

Mr Wenger has transformed our club and given us the pleasure of watching great football, winning trophies and always finishing above our neighbours.
I think it would be a shame for him to outstay his welcome and be subjected to abuse from the fans.